For a super secret project coming up, I need some help from The Cast Out. I need you to explain why Frank Herbert matters, why his writings are important, and without mention of Keith & Bobo. The spotlight is on Frank, not what the cunts have done to his legacy but why Frank's legacy deserves to be preserved and grown.

Well, his writing shows what is possible when you truly dedicate yourself to your given profession: Excellence. He put in so much time and effort into each of his books, and it shows.

* I don't KNOW how much time he put into each of his books, but I've read elsewhere that it was years for each book in the Dune series. I'm assuming he didn't squat out his other books. I haven't read them all, but can say that I have greatly enjoyed the ones I have read. It feels good to be able to suspend your disbelief while reading a work of fiction- to get caught up in a world someone has created for you.

Dune to me is about what humanity would be capable of if we had the will to do it and the ability to make long term plans and stick to them. For people to see Humanity as a species-organism with a timeless life cycle rather than a loose accumulation of short lives.

Robspierre wrote:Look past the slogans, why is it important that Frank Herbert's writing legacy be preserved and studied?

I'll take a very practical view, free from any "I was a friend of Frank" sentiment.

1. Because he wrote a classic of English literature. That, right there, is reason enough, and this list could stop after this item. Hell, if it's a good enough reason for J.D. Salinger, it's good enough for Frank Herbert.

2. Because very little work of a serious nature has actually been done on Frank Herbert, his life, and his work. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting something written about JRR Tolkien (or even George Lucas, for crying out loud), but you have to dig like a backhoe to find anything concerning Frank Herbert. The one biography, while apparently not the worst thing ever written, is fundamentally flawed from its author being a spineless jellyfish with serious emotional issues.

3. Because he was at his peak during a "Golden Age" of SF writing, full of classics that still hold up today (and will hold up 100 years from now). He was part of something larger than himself, and enough time has passed now to examine both the man himself (on his terms) and the man and his works as part of a larger fabric.

4. Because he wrote stuff that didn't have "Dune" in the title. To far too many people, FH is "the Dune guy." But he had an extensive list of credits, and most of his work is still in print or available as e-books. Yet I don't think I've ever seen a serious, scholarly examination of any of his other writings.

"Anything I write will be remembered and listed in bibliographies on Dune for several hundred years ..." — some delusional halfwit troll.

Robspierre wrote:Look past the slogans, why is it important that Frank Herbert's writing legacy be preserved and studied?

I'll take a very practical view, free from any "I was a friend of Frank" sentiment.

1. Because he wrote a classic of English literature. That, right there, is reason enough, and this list could stop after this item. Hell, if it's a good enough reason for J.D. Salinger, it's good enough for Frank Herbert.

2. Because very little work of a serious nature has actually been done on Frank Herbert, his life, and his work. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting something written about JRR Tolkien (or even George Lucas, for crying out loud), but you have to dig like a backhoe to find anything concerning Frank Herbert. The one biography, while apparently not the worst thing ever written, is fundamentally flawed from its author being a spineless jellyfish with serious emotional issues.

3. Because he was at his peak during a "Golden Age" of SF writing, full of classics that still hold up today (and will hold up 100 years from now). He was part of something larger than himself, and enough time has passed now to examine both the man himself (on his terms) and the man and his works as part of a larger fabric.

4. Because he wrote stuff that didn't have "Dune" in the title. To far too many people, FH is "the Dune guy." But he had an extensive list of credits, and most of his work is still in print or available as e-books. Yet I don't think I've ever seen a serious, scholarly examination of any of his other writings.

We have a winner. And you are right, it is time that Frank's life and work begin to be examined.

TheDukester wrote:4. Because he wrote stuff that didn't have "Dune" in the title. To far too many people, FH is "the Dune guy." But he had an extensive list of credits, and most of his work is still in print or available as e-books. Yet I don't think I've ever seen a serious, scholarly examination of any of his other writings.

Robspierre wrote:For a super secret project coming up, I need some help from The Cast Out. I need you to explain why Frank Herbert matters, why his writings are important, and without mention of Keith & Bobo. The spotlight is on Frank, not what the cunts have done to his legacy but why Frank's legacy deserves to be preserved and grown.

Sorry for the plug, but the chapter I wrote for Philosophy of Dune is more or less my longwinded answer to this question. Or at least explain the most important reason I can think of, why Frank Herbert matters.

In the early eighties ... if I remember correctly just before GEoD was published a Dutch reviewer wrote an essay about the Dune trilogy. As far as I know that has only ever been published in the Dutch language. Would it be interesting to translate it for the project? If so, I am willing to give it a shot ... even though I am not a translator.

"... the mystery of life isn't a problem to solve but a reality to experience."

“There is no escape—we pay for the violence of our ancestors.”

Sandrider: "Keith went to Bobo's for a weekend of drinking, watched some DVDs,and wrote a Dune Novel."

I don't know if it's too late, or if you've finished your project already, but I have a reason that Frank should be studied:

He was a philosopher with deep and subtle insight into various domains of study. Most philosophers write essays or nonfiction books on their topics in order to fully expound their reasoning, but some chose to write in other formats, such as Plato through dialogues, Shakespeare through plays, Sartre through plays and novels, and Ayn Rand through novels (Rand wrote plenty of essays as well but always claimed that they contained nothing that wasn't in her books). Frank chose to express his ideas through science fiction, which alone would made him noteworthy in the history of thought.

We might argue that many sci-fi authors wrote about their ideas and that therefore there is nothing to distinguish Frank as a 'philosopher' to separate him from them, and at that point I would have to simply say that Frank had very important and deep things to say that in my opinion (as a student of thought) have not been expressed before, and that the depth of content in even Dune alone is so vast that it couldn't even be contained in one or more nonfiction books on the same topics. Simply put, I think Frank's thoughts are more profound and accurate than that found in other sci-fi literature.

In fact, I think Frank's ideas are better expressed in Dune than they could have been through another medium, and in this sense Frank was as successful as Shakespeare - to produce a philosophical treatise as an entertainment and to have it succeed completely as entertainment while retaining its serious content. Rarely is this ever accomplished, since most 'philosophy as fiction' functions merely as a thinly veiled essay. Sartre and Rand, for example, may be read broadly, but the quality of their fiction I would say is inferior as literature to the concepts therein; compare to Frank, whose work is as beautiful as literature as it is in terms of ideas.

This, I think, is the most noteworthy thing about Frank among the various things I could choose to praise.